**Source:** Lenin Anthology XXX
**Page:** 107

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## "IMPERIALISM AND THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION"

**III. THE POLITICAL POINT OF VIEW.**

(8) We do not reject the bourgeois-democratic slogans, but carry through the democratic in them more consistently, more fully, more decisively.

(9) Not the interests of nations, but the interests of brotherhood, solidarity of workers of different nations.

**IV. THE POINT OF VIEW OF STATE BOUNDARIES.**

(10) We do not defend the given state boundaries.

(11) We are not for the utopia of small states, we do not demand everywhere and always the "independence of national states"....

(12) We put in the forefront the interests of the class struggle of workers under any possible changes of state boundaries.

(13) The "breakup" of Russia (England, Austria?) = United States.

**V. THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE INTERNATIONAL CLASS STRUGGLE OF THE PROLETARIAT.**

(14) The danger (and inevitability under capitalism) of national hostility and mistrust (à la Axelrod?* No!)

(15) The crux: the relationship of oppressing nations to oppressed ones.

(16) Class solidarity of workers of different nations is impossible without recognition of the right to separation.

**VI. "PRACTICAL FEASIBILITY."**

(17) "Utopia"! Norway versus Sweden.

(18) "An exception"! ("Backwater").

Yes, like all democratic reforms and transformations.

(19) "Practically = zero."

No = (a) freedom of agitation for separation
(b) decision of the question of separation by referendum (2 §§ of the constitution).

(20) "What are the guarantees? Only war will decide!"

(Our guarantees — the education of working masses in the spirit of brotherhood of nations.)

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**VII. THE MILITARY POINT OF VIEW.**

(21) "Self-determination of nations = justification for participation in war."

There is war and war. National wars we do not "deny." They are possible even now.

(22) "If self-determination, then Holland, Sweden, etc. have the right to defend themselves." How can one defend oneself in an imperialist war?

**VIII. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST SOCIAL-CHAUVINISM.**

(23) Social-chauvinism is just as inevitable a product of imperialism as wireless telegraphy. The struggle against it = the essence of the present moment.

(24) The struggle against chauvinism of one's own nation.

(25) The main thing — great-power chauvinism.

(26) "Recognition of equality" = evasion of the question of state organization, of separation, of cases of imperialist war.

(27) *Wir treffen den Nagel auf den Kopf* only with our formulation. Only this formula strikes at and cuts through international social-chauvinism.

**IX. COMPARISON WITH DIVORCE.**

(28) Rosa Luxemburg on divorce (versus autonomy).

(29) Semkovsky's objection.

(30) His incorrectness.

**X. THE WEYDEMEYERCASE.**

(31) Social-chauvinists expelled Weydelmeyer, a betrayal of their principles.

(32) Participation in war from our point of view is not a sin. But for agitation in the army? For transforming war into civil war?

(33) The choice of nation. (In which army?)

**XI. THE RELATION OF LIBERAL BOURGEOISIE.**

(34) In Russia: we (Kadets) are for equality, but have never undertaken to defend the right to separation from the Russian state.

(35) Karl Kautsky on political self-determination ("enough of cultural [measures] and autonomy")...

**XII. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE RSDLP.**

(36) The posing of the question at the 1903 congress.

(37) The departure of P.S.D. and entry in 1906.

(38) Never officially demanded the repeal of § 9.

(39) The "union" of opportunists with Rosa in 1914 (liquidators: Semkovsky; Libman; Yurkevich; Aleksinsky).

**XIII. THE EXAMPLE OF MARX AND ENGELS.**

(40) 1848 Germany versus oppressed nations (*Nachlass*, III, p. 109, 113 and 114).
1866 Engels and the International (Marx) on Poland and Germany.
1869 Marx on Ireland.

(41) The point of view of the interests of workers of the oppressing nation.

(NB) Marx was for federation with Ireland (NB)

**XIV. THE "FORMULA" OF THE "ZIMMERWALD LEFT."**

(42) "No maintenance of the domination of one nation over another"...

The question: does it include freedom of separation? Or not.

Non-recognition of freedom of separation *is* "maintenance of domination."

This formula = "the first step toward rapprochement"...

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## FRAGMENTS OF THE ARTICLE

### CROSSED-OUT PAGES OF THE ORIGINAL TEXT

[The right of nations to self-determination seems to comrade Parabellum] a reversion to outdated antiquity, to petty-bourgeois utopia of "separatism" and peaceful competition between independent national states.

Fighting with this enemy (petty-bourgeois utopians), who in essence has long since died and been buried, comrade Parabellum, unwittingly, plays into the hands of social-chauvinists who dominate in England, France, Germany, and in part in Russia.

We cannot counterpose the revolutionary mass struggle for socialism to a revolutionarily-consistent program on the national question. We must unite the first with the second. One cannot imagine the socialist revolution as a single battle along a single front: imperialism versus socialism. This revolution will be an entire epoch of intensified class struggle and all manner of social upheavals, an entire series of battles along the most diverse fronts, over the most varied economic and political transformations that have matured and demand the fundamental destruction of old relations. Among these democratic transformations, entering into the concept of social revolution, a prominent place must inevitably be occupied by transformations of national relations. The revolutionary proletariat will not fulfill its task if it does not defend from this moment a consistent program on this question as well.

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(a) A revolutionary program on the national question. With comrade Parabellum it turns out as if the socialist revolution is a single battle along one economic front: socialism versus imperialism. This is incorrect. The revolution of the proletariat will be an epoch of an entire series of battles along all fronts, i.e., on all economic and political questions, including the national one. The resolution of this entire sum of conflicts arising from all these unresolved questions will give the social revolution. The sum of battles over all these transformations will give the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the establishment of complete democracy, and the organization of socialist society. It is absurd to counterpose the revolutionary struggle against capitalism to one of the questions of democracy, the national question. The proletariat cannot conquer except through democracy, except by realizing democracy fully. Therefore all democratic requirements—militia, the election of officials by the people, the equality of nations, the self-determination of nations, etc.—must be completed and united with the requirement of revolutionary struggle against capitalism. Not to counterpose this struggle to individual democratic requirements, but in the sphere of each democratic question to give a definition of our tasks bound up with the general revolutionary struggle for socialism, and equally revolutionary—that is the only social-democratic formulation of the question.

In the third place, comrade Parabellum, instead of defining the revolutionary line of the proletariat on the national question, gives us assurances that "we are against annexations, against violence toward nations." There are plenty of such assurances from social-chauvinists and from Kautsky and Co. All these people will reject Parabellum's formula "revolutionary mass struggle against capitalism," but with pleasure they will recognize the self-determination of nations hypocritically, without extending this recognition precisely to those nations that are oppressed by their own nation. [This applies not only to Plekhanov and Hyndman, but also to Kautsky, who, seeking "unity" with social-chauvinists, wrote that to demand "state independence" (*staatliche Selbstständigkeit*) for every nation means to demand "excessive," *"zu viel"* (*Neue Zeit* 33, II, 77, 16. IV. 1915). Either they deny the right to self-determination altogether with arguments like Parabellum's (Kunov, Parvus, Russian opportunists and liquidators).

Kautsky's position is the most harmful and dangerous to the working class, for he verbally recognizes the self-determination of nations, verbally recognizes that the social-democratic party "respects and demands the independence of nations in all respects and unreservedly," but in reality reduces this right to a formula that means nothing, precisely truncates it, without singling out socialists of oppressed [nations].

After 1848, not fighting at all with petty-bourgeois democrats (they were already killed and buried then), but with the chauvinism of English workers, with the anarchism of Proudhon, who "denied" the national question almost as decisively as Parabellum now denies it.

Marx demanded in 1868 the separation of Ireland from England! Marx not only harbored no illusions about the possibility of the existence of a small Irish people separately alongside powerful England, which was already at that time the greatest world empire—no, Marx directly and immediately foresaw the necessity of federation with England immediately after separation. Marx did not for a moment [harbor illusions about] imperialism, [it is] urgent and timely with respect to all great powers and all nations oppressed by them.

The "great-power" nations—the English, Germans, French, Great-Russians—oppress directly and indirectly, through mediation and immediately, more than half the population of the earth, now waging the first—and probably not the last—imperialist war for the expansion and strengthening of this oppression, for a more "just," more corresponding to the given force of capital of different countries, redistribution of great-power rights, privileges, and prerogatives.

It is precisely the point of view of struggle against the chauvinism of dominant, advanced nations holding the fate of the world in their hands, great-power nations—and not at all the point of view of "small peoples" and various "corners of Europe"—that must now be decisive. It is precisely the interests of the revolutionary struggle of the masses of the proletariat against capitalism, and not at all the interests of small peoples, that require the defense by socialists of great powers of the right to separation (= the right to self-determination) of oppressed nations. The struggle for socialism is the struggle of the internationally-revolutionary proletariat. Precisely because capitalism has bound the whole world into one economic organism, this struggle cannot but be international. And in order to be such in fact, not in words only, it is necessary that the proletariat not struggle in a bourgeois manner against the oppression of nations—not in a [bourgeois manner]—like democrats. Unlike them, unlike the Scheidemanns, speaking for the *Vorstand*, "assuring" that they are against annexations, unlike Kautsky, who reduces the demand for self-determination to something harmless to the bourgeoisie, acceptable to the bourgeoisie, to a demand obligating no one—the demand for cultural (non-political) self-determination—we must put forward, precisely from the point of view of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of advanced countries, a demand that fundamentally exposes the bourgeoisie, fundamentally undermines its sophisms, formulating what is basic and chief in the matter of the freedom of nations—namely, the demand for freedom of separation. The unacceptability of this demand for the bourgeoisie—in the vast majority of cases and in all the fullness of its realization, this demand is, of course, unacceptable—does not mean "utopianism" of it (only the Kunovs and those like him, lackeys of imperialist bourgeoisie, understand "utopianism" in this way!).

No, unacceptability for the bourgeoisie means that we, representatives of the revolutionary proletariat, do not dream of any peaceful development of capitalism, do not sow illusions on this score, but expect precisely the sharpening of struggle and revolution from the clarification of the masses, from insisting before the masses on our consistently-democratic demands.

It is clear in itself—and the example of Marx's demand for the separation of Ireland from England in 1868 particularly vividly confirms this—that freedom of separation does not at all mean propaganda for the formation of small national states in general. It means only, on the one hand, a demand for democracy carried through consistently, with proletarian revolutionariness, not with bourgeois half-heartedness, carried to the end—not stopping at the fact that consistent democracy leads to social revolution, but on the contrary precisely drawing strength and firmness from this for decisive struggle for democracy. It means, on the other hand...

...will constitute the socialist revolution and unfold all its content, there will also be national conflicts arising from the oppression of nations. Incidents like the Zabern case will not be rarer but more frequent, and the task of the proletariat will be not to ignore all such "incidents," but on the contrary to sharpen, broaden, and transform them into the beginning of the socialist revolution. Only the consistently-democratic program on the question of self-determination that we propose answers such a designation.

Petty-bourgeois democrats and routine socialists, not seeing the depth of the collapse of the Second International, content themselves with the old formula "self-determination"...

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### FRAGMENT OF THE PLAN OF THE ARTICLE

(4) Against annexations (this is acceptable even to bourgeois pacifist-democrats).

(5) The distinction between oppressing and oppressed nations is inessential from the point of view of the utopia of "brotherhood of peoples" under capitalism. It is essential from the point of view of the revolutionary struggle against pacifism.

(6) The bourgeoisie is ready to promise any sort of "equality," any sort of "national autonomy," only so that the proletariat peacefully, in Scheidemann fashion, in Kautsky fashion, submits to it on the question of state boundaries.

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**EDITORIAL NOTES:**

¹ In the latter part of October 1915, Lenin intended to deliver lectures in Zurich and Geneva: "the 22nd in Zurich, the 20th in Geneva," he wrote to Karpinsky in Geneva (see "Lenin Anthology" XI, 184). The lecture in Zurich on the theme "International Socialist Conference of 5-8 September 1915" took place on October 23. Informing Karpinsky of the appointment of the lecture date, Lenin wrote: "If possible, appoint [in Geneva, Ed.] a day or two before or after" (ibid., p. 185). The topic of the Geneva lecture was apparently determined later: "I will write about the lecture tomorrow" (letter to Karpinsky of October 6, ibid., p. 189). The outline "Imperialism and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" evidently pertains to the Geneva lecture delivered by Lenin on October 28, 1915. Lenin added this date to the manuscript later, to the side of the title, placing it in square brackets.

² Axelrod's point of view is set forth in his pamphlet "Crisis and the Tasks of International Social-Democracy," published shortly before the Zimmerwald Conference (see Works of Lenin XVIII, 306).

³ See Lenin's article "On a Caricature of Marxism" (Works XIX, 232-233).

⁴ Ge. Weydelmeyer—German social-democrat, revisionist, native of Alsace; during the imperialist war went over to the French side, enlisting as a volunteer in the French Army; for this he was expelled from the party in Germany, deprived of deputy mandates, and declared a deserter.

⁵ See Lenin's article "The First Step" (Works XVIII, 297-301).